ShortCircuited

Having finished Spice and Wolf recently, it only seemed to reinforce the fact that I really enjoy the dynamic. A lady of extraordinary circumstances comes upon a young man who is quite average in most respects¹. We saw this in Crest of the Stars, Shakugan no Shana, Mahoraba… the list goes on.

These shows span genres but they all contain a certain tenderness between the two main characters - something I’ve come to really enjoy watching. Toradora did well in this respect, even managing a wider web of interactions than I expected in just 13 episodes.

I would have thought I would tire of this basic pairing, but I guess the writing and execution still capture my attention, time after time.

1 While their softness is typical for their role, it’s something I wouldn’t consider to be particularly normal though. Would you?

Tags, categories, and probably some other stuff are all broken.

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An endearing show involving people from all walks of life, sewn together with superb story-telling. The greatest treat is that all the characters are written with intelligence, exuding a feeling of life and presence which can be quite refreshing. Production values are consistently exceptional throughout to boot.

Figure 1-1: Breathtaking.

With the premise being a disowned prince, possessed by a spirit, fleeing for his life while in the protection of a maverick bodyguard, there is the expected drama, mystery, and action - but interestingly there is also some aspects of slice of life. We are shown how the people live their lives, run their businesses, and endure.

Surprisingly, the character development is toned down quite a bit. While characters learn from their experiences, they were all driven to begin with, the writer instead uses events to flesh them out in greater detail.

One thing that really bothered me was the awkward “filler” episode (Balsa is a tiger! Roar!), it did not fit well with the rest of the series at all, so perhaps it was an anime only feature? Although the episode eludes to Balsa’s determination and inner conflicts, the resolution is weak and anti-climatic. One could probably skip it, they would miss nothing relevant in my opinion. Oh, I almost forgot… it does have a great fight scene (and a tiger! Roar!), I guess that would be worth watching at the very least.

While the slow pacing was hard to adapt to, especially at the beginning, it might have been due to my expectations of more fighting and greater involvement of the fantasy themes. The story revolves more around the lives of the characters, carefully fleshing them out despite the large cast. Realistically, even in exceptional vicissitudes, life continues - and by the end of the story everyone returns to their usual pattern of life.

This quarter kicks off with a bang and we get our first taste of things to come. When I first saw the “second Chii” I wasn’t really too sure what to make of it, maybe it’s a rather interesting (or bad) VM implementation. I was rather dismayed that Yumi got shafted by Hideki rushing out to save his precious persocom from a peeping show, but I too would be rather alarmed if someone abducted my computer and started fingering it.

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Chobits, sweet and tender or dark and perverted? I went into the series with that question in mind but got a bit lost along the way.

Anyways, I thought I’d throw down some of my thoughts and ideas into 4 or 5 parts throughout the series before attempting an answer, since doing it all in one go isn’t tractable. (It also gives me time to ruminate on it as a whole but still be able to write about it while things are still fresh.)

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Author at Ani-nouto has noted that the Japanese frequently use 4 (hiragana) character abbreviations, but it seems things don’t end there. The use of 4 syllable phrases looks to be common in the language and is something we even see in anime titles as Peter Payne (of j-list) shows us in his blog post. The use of the phrase Tenchi Muyo gave me a good laugh.

While the post title is a bit critical, I found To Aru Majutsu no Index to be one of the stronger shows this season. Likable characters and well-animated, one can’t go wrong - except the dialogue does get tiresome in a few parts. Case in point, in episode 4, Touma’s extended fight against Kanzaki Kaori (what a body!) started off quite strong but the dialogue felt a bit excessive (the music was a bit jarring towards the end of the fight too). Touma spent quite a period of time berating a nonchalant Kaori until she got angry, and although we got to cover some backstory it felt as if nothing new or unexpected was said.

Note: Although I have read the manga a little bit past the end of the first arc (the ending being quite good in my opinion), comparisons do not need to be made here. Manga can usually afford to be quite wordy and not suffer - comparing exposition and dialogue between the two media feels like a futile and uninformative exercise.

Anyways, if worst comes to worst I’m sure the strong characters will still carry the series through.

Appendix A: Full sized screenshots: 1 2

Dai Mahou Touge (Magical Witch Punie-chan in North America) is an action comedy which initially just comes off as a crude parody of the magical girl genre to those who have not watched it. (Un)fortunately it is also quite a bit more.

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Today at the Toronto Internation Film Festival, Mori Hiroshi’s novel The Sky Crawlers will be brought to life on the silver screen with Mamoru Oishii at the helm of what looks to be a very interesting movie.

Unfortunately I only found out about this a couple of days ago and was not able to make appropriate plans to attend the any of the multiple screenings, however I hope this heralds a (well-dubbed-like-Princess-Mononoke) release sometime in the next year!

A Strike Witches vector from a magazine scan. Contains gratuitous pantsu like my meido vector, so its after the jump.

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